Talk:Nuclear power

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Nuclear power

IMPORTANT: the entire article should be rewritten to make the distinction between current 'dangerous' and less dangerous thorium fission. Almost nobody knows of the safer nuclear option. I think it is very important to make this knowledge more widely available. Especially to media and decision makers who might turn here for information. Two suggestions below:

Nuclear power

Article reads Nuclear power is produced by controlled (i.e., non-explosive) nuclear reactions. Commercial and utility plants currently use nuclear fission reactions to heat water to produce steam, which is then used to generate electricity.

Much better would be: ... currently use uranium and plutonium nuclear fission ... ...electricity. Slow work is in progress to start using the much saferThorium

Future of the industry

should include a reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Thorium_as_a_nuclear_fuel

Waste from fusion

Article reads Nuclear fusion reactions are safer and generate less radioactive waste than fission. As ITER is still under construction and its goals include momentarily produce ten times more thermal energy from fusion heating than is supplied by auxiliary heating, note the momentarily and thermal, this claim is pure speculation at best, and is not even sourced to any authority.

But it gets worse. ITER will use the D+T reaction, and again quoting that article, most of energy in the D+T fusion reaction is released in the form of fast neutrons. The damage these neutrons do to the material(s) used for the lining (the Plasma Facing Components) is a key problem. Whatever the material(s) used for these in a plant that (unlike ITER) actually produces electrical power, it's certain that these components:

• Will require regular replacement.

• Will be highly radioactive after use.

Will these materials be initially more or less radioactive than the corresponding amount of spent nuclear fuel produced by a fission plant? Nobody knows. The proponents of fusion hope it will be less. But even if this turns out to be true, there's another problem.

Nuclear fission burns radioactive fuel. Proposed fusion plants won't. They generate the radioactive tritium they burn from non-radioactive feedstock.

So with a fission plant, the increase in radioactivity is temporary. The spent fuel is intensely radioactive, but in less than three thousand years it will be less radioactve than the ore that was mined to produce it.

There's no such crossover period with the waste from fusion, so the Earth becomes permanently more radioactive as a result of fusion power. Andrewa (talk) 14:37, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

These arguments are specious. I invite you to examine the table of reactions in the nuclear fusion article. Except for tritium (³H), produced in the deuterium-deuterium reaction, radioactive materials do not result directly as products of the fusion reaction itself. And tritium has three properties that make it a minor hazard: first, it is itself a highly valuable and reactive fusion fuel, which can and should be conserved and re-used. Second, it has a half-life of only 12 years, decaying into ³He, which is completely stable, inert and also highly valuable. Third, its radioactive decay produces only very low-energy electrons with negligible penetrating power, so that unless it is actually ingested it is not a hazard.

I invite you to reread my post. The problem is irradiation of the Plasma Facing Components by neutrons. The hazards or otherwise of tritium and other reaction products form no part of the argument.

The first wall materials pretty much have to be low Z (? graphite, Be, oxygen (in oxides), SiC maybe, ...?) to avoid contaminating the plasma with ions that would produce unacceptable radiative losses, or be structurally neutron damaged. It is essential to distinguish between the problem of neutron damage to the structural properties (ie, chemical/mechanical, at root) of reactor materials and activation by neutrons. The former is a serious issue for the first wall, the latter is not. I think you would be hard put to find any candidate materials that would produce activation lives of much over 100 y. Note also that the activation properties of these materials are easy to determine from small samples in accelerators or reactors, but the structural effects of high fluxes of energetic neutrons, involving damage to crystal structure, etc, are harder to study and much less well-known. Characterizing them is an important issue for ITER and other current projects. Wwheaton (talk) 16:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree that the two issues of structural damage and activation are distinct and that this is important. But they are related in that the structural considerations limit the material choices severely. Andrewa (talk) 18:37, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Because no other radioisotopes are created essentially in fusion reactions themselves, designers are free to choose materials for the reactor structure which are less susceptible to neutron activation with the production of dangerous wastes. The shielding for high energy neutrons would be largely light, low-Z (atomic number) materials. These materials by and large have few or no long-lived radioactive isotopes that are created by neutron bombardment. Furthermore, light radioactive isotopes that produce high energy radiations tend to have short lifetimes, roughly inversely related to the decay energy, so such induced radioactivity as is produced is far less hazardous than the actinides and fission products that are created in fission reactors. (Of course no radioactive materials are "permanent"; by definition all decay. Those that have very long life—⁴⁰K is the outstanding example of a common, relatively low-Z radioisotope—are by the same token less intensely radioactive.)

But designers are only free to choose from materials that can be developed, and the suggestion that the best of these materials will meet any specific limit of residual radioactivity on replacement is pure speculation at this stage. It's such popular and important speculation that it does belong in the article, but it needs to be sourced so we can see exactly who is saying it and exactly what they are saying.

All radioactivity is also in a sense permanent, again by the very nature (definition if you like) of radioactive decay. The earth is already (permanently) radioactive, and immediately becomes more radioactive as a result of any sort of nuclear power. The difference is, with fission there's a point in the future after which the earth is (permanently) less radioactive as a result of our activities, but with fusion it will always be more radioactive. I don't think this is in itself a reason to avoid this fusion, but it raises a big problem for those who claim we should prefer fusion to fission because of the waste problem, don't you think?

The time scale for complete (every single active atom decayed!) removal of wastes is <100 times the half life, which is of the order of 1000 years for fission products (eg, Cs137, Sr90, etc) and 25,000y for most actinides (plutonium, notably). For fusion these half lives are ~12 y for tritium and times shorter than fission product lifetimes for reasonable first wall and structural materials, with the possible exception of exotic things like superconducting magnet materials. Compare this with the 4.5 billion year life of U238 (and the 14 Gy life of Th), and you can see that fission does indeed clean up the planet on the million-year time scale, but fusion does not "permanently" contaminate it in any realistic sense. These are engineering issues for sure, but not the serious radiological waste issues which fission does indisputably have. Wwheaton (talk) 16:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

This approximation works only for small samples, does it not? Andrewa (talk) 18:37, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but it is correct for <1.4e12 moles, which would correspond, eg to 200 million tons of Cs137, probably the most dangerous product produced by fission. For comparison the total US production of fission waste to date (according to Burton Richter's "Beyond Smoke and Mirrors", Cambridge Univ Press 2010) is <120,000 tons (of which ~90% is simply unused uranium). For each 10X increase in sample size, add 3.3 half-lives to my 100 for my statement to remain valid. Wwheaton (talk) 13:09, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

The high-energy neutrons accompanying fusion are mainly a problem because they can can produce damage to the structural materials of the reactor, degrading their properties. (This is especially an issue in the plasma containment magnets, and in the "first wall", facing the reacting plasma.) The bottom line is that radioactive waste from fusion reactors, while not entirely absent, would be far less problematic than for fission. Wwheaton (talk) 17:13, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree with the first two sentences, very well put, but understated. These neutrons not only can produce damage, they do produce damage, and the result of degrading their properties is that the material must eventually be replaced. But so far as the bottom line goes, who says it's not a problem? That's all I'm asking. You may find they are describing their goals and hopes rather than their predictions. Andrewa (talk) 18:42, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Some materials will surely need to be replaced periodically, no one disputes that, but they will have only low-level activity, with short decay life, nothing like the very dangerous waste from fission reactors. Wwheaton (talk) 16:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Evidence? Citations? Andrewa (talk) 18:37, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Article now reads Nuclear fusion reactions have the potential to be safer and generate less radioactive waste than fission, and the dubious tag I added has been removed, but there's still no citation to source these claims. The restatement of these conjectures regarding waste and safety is not quite weasel words, but it's the same sort of problem.

I really think we need a source. If nobody has one, the claims should simply be removed. Andrewa (talk) 04:42, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course we certainly need references for everything, but these statements have been made by many authoritative sources, so let's wait for editors with the literature at their fingertips to weigh in with good current ones. I have an older textbook on fusion power (Introduction to Fusion Energy, J. Reece Roth, 1986) on my bookshelf which must surely mention it, but may not be very accessible to the average reader. The references for fusion power and ITER would be good places to start looking, for anyone with a little free time. Wwheaton (talk) 16:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

If it's the best source we have at present it should be cited... Please add the citation, it's better than nothing and allows the reader to assess the quality of information we're providing. It seems to be out of print but it's available second-hand [1] and at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory library [2] so it's an excellent reference, both authoritative and verifiable, but perhaps a bit out of date so far as the hopes of researchers are concerned. Andrewa (talk) 16:49, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Sure. I will locate a page reference after a week, when I get back from a trip out of town. Wwheaton (talk) 13:14, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I finally beefed up the reference by thinking to simply borrow one already used in our Fusion power article, which is certainly more recent and available on-line. This saved me searching for the best page reference in a large textbook, and I hope it is satisfactory to all. Wwheaton (talk) 01:29, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I think there are (2) take-home points here.

• The statement: "The earth is already (permanently) radioactive, and immediately becomes more radioactive as a result of any sort of nuclear power." should not be used as an argument for anything, since the earth is constantly bombarded from all directions by a wide spectrum of high energy cosmic and solar radiation. In fact when you sit on an airplane you are irradiated by approximately 10-100 times that of sea-level. Would that be a sensible reason to take a boat across the Atlantic? Probably not.
• As the name ITER implies it is an experimental fusion reactor, so I cannot see why this discussion is going off into various and yet somewhat hypothetical dangers based on this technology, when in fact we have not yet built a fusion energy device meant for continuous energy production. So let's be a bit more diplomatic here and say that there are currently some unsolved problems with fusion waste products.

Jahibadkaret (talk) 14:38, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Incomplete Sentence

In the Future of Nuclear section it reads

Many countries remain active in developing nuclear power, including China, India, Japan and Pakistan. all actively developing both fast and thermal technology, South Korea and the United States, developing thermal technology only, and South Africa and China, developing versions of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR).

I'm not exactly sure what this is trying to say, but it currently doesn't make sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.242.166.163 (talk) 14:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm not quite sure what was intended either, but it is now closer to grammatical English. I hope others with knowledge of the national programs mentioned will check and correct any errors of fact. It obviously needs more explicit referencing. Wwheaton (talk) 01:00, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

world map legend

The world map doesn't have a legend. It says you can see the legend when you click the image, but that is not true. -- 130.89.173.183 (talk) 16:54, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The Vermont nuclear plant is in Vernon, not Montpelier. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjgould1 (talk • contribs) 20:27, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blubbaloo (talk • contribs) 13:11, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 163.231.6.68, 10 January 2011

{{edit semi-protected}}

This paragraph makes no sense. It starts off talking about a TV show, then switches to an article. Then it introduces someone named Mandil, but does not identify who this is. Also, it seems very biased.

According to a 2007 story broadcast on 60 Minutes, nuclear power gives France the cleanest air of any industrialized country, and the cheapest electricity in all of Europe.[66] France reprocesses its nuclear waste to reduce its mass and make more energy.[67] However, the article continues, "Today we stock containers of waste because currently scientists don't know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will... Nuclear waste is an enormously difficult political problem which to date no country has solved. It is, in a sense, the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry... If France is unable to solve this issue, says Mandil, then 'I do not see how we can continue our nuclear program.'"[67] Further, reprocessing itself has its critics, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists.[68]

Thermal power also produces waste in huge quantities which are dumped into the atmosphere. If Mr Mandil disklikes nuclear power stations (an easy position to adopt) he should explain the alternatives (this requires a little effort).

163.231.6.69 (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

 Not done for now: What do you want to change? →♠Gƒoley↔Four♣← 22:49, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Factual inaccuracy

The evacuation of 300,000 people from Kiev is untrue, scoopy and contradicts to the Chernobyl disaster. Kiev is the city 50 km away from the disaster site, which was not officially declared as effected territory; no resettlement from the city followed the disaster. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.132.58.193 (talk) 22:34, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 173.51.94.43, 12 March 2011

{{edit semi-protected}}

The first American Nuclear plant meltdown. It was the Boeing Rocketdyne plant in Santa Susana, overlooking Chatsworth, California in the 1950's. It was the first nuclear plant to actually power a city. That city was Moorpark, California. Here is the article support it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory

173.51.94.43 (talk) 12:19, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't seem serious enough to really be listed along with the other big things that have occured. The table on this page only talks about accidents that caused more than 300 million dollars in property damage. Even Nuclear and radiation accidents#List of accidents at nuclear power plants only lists accidents that caused fatalities or that caused more than 100 million dollars in property damage. I'm not saying that it's a clean place, but contamination apparently occurred over a period of time from multiple incidents, "During its years of operation widespread use occurred of highly toxic chemical additives to power over 30,000 rocket engine tests and to clean the rocket test-stands afterwards, as well as considerable nuclear research and at least four nuclear accidents..." That first "meltdown" just doesn't seem serious enough to really be mentioned anywhere. Did you have a specific place in mind that you wanted to put a mention in? What exactly did you want it to say? Banaticus (talk) 16:37, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Accuracy of protest movement history

This item states: "Protest movements against nuclear power first emerged in the USA in the late 1970s..." But the first U.S. opposition to a commercial nuclear (then called 'atomic') facility started in 1961, when Pacific Gas & Electric wanted to build a plant in Bodega Head, on the coast near San Francisco and close to the San Andreas fault. After enormous opposition, the Public Utilities Commission rejected the plant in 1963. Lcushing (talk) 23:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

You're right, some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the early 1960s, and in the late 1960s some members of the scientific community began to express their concerns. I've made some improvements to the text, but specific mention of the Bodega Head saga is probably best placed in the Nuclear power in the United States article. Johnfos (talk) 01:14, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Metsamor, Armenia NPP Issue following the Japan Quake

In light of what has happened at Fukushima recently and considering that the NPP at Metsamor, Armenia is located within a seismically active region that has experienced devastating earthquakes in the recent past, the safety of this plant really needs to be evaluated closely. The operating standards at Metsamor are far inferior to those of the Fukushima plant and there are no plans at this point to close it down. Following the experience of Japan though, this will probably change, taking note of the fact that the continued operation of this plant is unjustified. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.43.1.66 (talk) 05:46, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Add scale to "Accidents and safety" section?

As we now learn about the International Nuclear Event Scale, with Fukushima I nuclear accidents rated 6 and the Chernobyl disaster rated 7, maybe in this section we could get the INES ratings (if available) of the other accidents, as part of the chart. --Magmagirl (talk) 20:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

POV

If this article were any more POV, it would be an opinion piece. Heavy editing is needed! 69.226.34.25 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC).

Here are some examples:

• A fundamental goal for American and global security is to minimize the nuclear proliferation risks associated with the expansion of nuclear power. If this development is "poorly managed or efforts to contain risks are unsuccessful, the nuclear future will be dangerous".[112] <-- Quote or not, that's POV like whoa.
• It is often claimed that nuclear stations are inflexible in their output, implying that other forms of energy would be required to meet peak demand. <-- "It is often claimed" = "I believe"
• The entire section "Economics" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.226.34.25 (talk) 09:06, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Tigerdragon, 18 March 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} The quake size needs to be changed from 8.9 to 9.

Tigerdragon (talk) 13:05, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

 Done — Bility (talk) 23:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Under the High-level radioactive waste section

It reads:
After 40 years, the radiation flux is 99.9% lower than it was the moment the spent fuel was removed from operation. Still, this 0,1% is dangerously radioactive.
0,1% should read as 0.1%.
J1raymond (talk) 16:25, 19 March 2011 (UTC)j1raymond

Chernobyl deaths

The statement Steam explosion and meltdown with 4,057 deaths is falce. You cannot just add 57 direct death to "estimated additional 4000 cases of cancer" - this is plain stupid. I request to rewrite this sentence as: with 57 direct death and up to 4000 additional cases of cancer estimated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.249.56.160 (talk) 17:38, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree with this argument. It is not accurate to assume deaths to make it sound worse. --Jumprun4112 (talk) 06:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Zenonian, 22 March 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} A minor edit for style: I suggest the nuclear accidents be listed in chronological order; Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, then Fukushima I. Zenonian (talk) 18:04, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Flexibility of output

It is not quite easy to find sources that are technically reliable, independent and nonpartisan, for now I found this publication http://www.tab-beim-bundestag.de/en/research/u9600.html and this http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7268832.stm. So if nothing better turns up I would base the paragraph on these two sources. Richiez (talk) 20:38, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Accidents and safetly is inacurrately stating dangerous levels of radiation.

Explosions and a fire have resulted in dangerous levels of radiation, sparking a stock market collapse and panic-buying in supermarkets.

The radiation that has increased at the plant is relatively low and was never dangerous for most people at the site, let alone outside the plant boundary. The reference that is used for the incorrect statement even says:

The radiation levels peaked at a relatively low 6.4 millisieverts, officials said, but some three hours later there was no news on whether the crews had been allowed back into the plant 250km northeast of Tokyo.

This is about the same as the annual dose each person in the US receives from natural sources such minerals in the ground, and from man-made sources such as medical x-rays: EPA-Radiation Doses in Perspective

For another source on the low levels of radiation: NEI website

Radiation Monitoring Continues

Air samples collected at on-site monitors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant March 19-23 show that only iodine-131 was found to be in excess of Japanese government limits. Radiation dose rates measured on site March 21-23 have decreased from 193 millirem to 21 millirem per hour. Radiation dose rates at the plant's site boundary ranged from 1 millirem to 3 millirem per hour on Thursday.

Since 1 mSv = 100 millrems, we can see the highest dose on site was 1.93 millisieverts. There are areas in the primary contamination that can always be found higher than this and they are dangerous, but they are kept off limits except for emergencies. So far, only 2 people have been hospitalized for going in those areas and it was a precautionary measure. They were each exposed with much less radiation than the lethal limit.

Please update the page to accurately reflect the actual radiation levels that existed in the Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami disaster. --Jumprun4112 (talk) 05:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Number of closed down reactors in the world?

How many closed down reactors in the world? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.215.47.178 (talk) 19:37, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The IAEA database says 125 shutdown reactors (37.794 GWe).[3]

—WWoods (talk) 20:41, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Opening Sentence is inaccurate and awkward.

delete

"Nuclear energy" redirects here. For other uses, see Nuclear binding energy and Nuclear Energy (sculpture).

delete

"Atomic Power" redirects here. For the film, see Atomic Power (film).

keep

This article is about Source of energy. For nation states that are nuclear powers, see List of states with nuclear weapons.

change:

Nuclear power is produced by controlled (i.e., non-explosive) nuclear reactions. Commercial and utility plants currently use nuclear fission reactions to heat water to produce steam, which is then used to generate electricity.

to read:

Nuclear power is the use of sustained Nuclear fission to produce heat and do useful work. Nuclear Electric Plants capture nuclear energy by heating water to produce steam, while in space, nuclear energy is used to heat a gas, which expands in a Stirling engine.

1. The opening sentence isn't a definition of the title any more than "Red is the color than comes out of a red pen" is the definition of red.
2. "Nuclear Power" is not produced; rather energy is converted to heat, with the final product being electrical power (with waste heat utilization in some cases).
3. I suggest that less important redirects do not deserve top billing over the article synopsis.
4. This an encyclopedia, not the book of revelations: what in the future may be, is not the proper domain of an Encyclopedia. Thus fusion is a topic for a different article future, experimental, and speculative energy sources unless someone can point to fusion plant producing more power than it consumes...
5. sustained reaction is the best term: Controlled & Moderated come close but in space, reactions are not controlled or moderated, instead they are merely sustained at the natural half-life.

Consider renaming / splitting

1. Given that Nuclear power plant doesn't have its own article and instead is renting a bedroom inside an article with 3 disambiguation prefixes...
2. Given that nuclear Stirling engines used in space are so different from terrestrial power plants...

Might it not improve the ontology to have Nuclear power plant, List of Nuclear powers, and Atomic energy with links to both?

1. Atomic energy is more original and arguably more descriptive, but sufficiently unique as not to require 3 disambs (Nuclear Power describes any country with an Atomic bomb, though not counties with merely nuclear power. Benjamin Gatti (talk) 01:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)